Just Another Everyday Crisis

* takes place before these events

It had started like a normal day with evaluating a few of the newest medical recruits to the station. Lorna liked this side of her job on Jovan, as she had done that on several occasions in the past, when she was helping develop curriculum in local med schools. She had been back for a few weeks and had fallen back into the rhythm of her assignment. While she missed her field work with the Director, she had never considered any tasks beneath her and working here was still the crystallization of years orbiting the Alliance before officially joining.

Drinking her third cup of caf since her early morning, Lorna was stretching her legs in between appointments, letting her mind unwind, even though she scolded herself for where it briefly wandered. Focusing back on the task at hand, something that came easy to the near-human, she heard her comlink beep with what indicated an emergency alert. Switching her half-empty cup to another hand, she fetched the small device and checked the message, which immediately brought a frown to her face.

A lot more happen on the station than one might think and this latest bit of news definitely beyond what one might expect when just visiting the place or reading about it.

She quickly checked with her assistant to reschedule the rest of her day. She had the feeling this was going to take a while. Gathering some of her portable equipment, including breathing devices, she promptly left the medbay and fetched a vehicle for she wasn't going to just walk or even jog to the other side of the station.

***

Ten minutes later, she arrived at one of the main dock hubs of the station, that was mostly for personal transports of the upper class; but also for some of their personal belongings. Lorna wasn't one hundred percent sure how this specific one operated but the zone had been closed off the public and decontamination teams were already going into the inside perimeter. The medical doctor made her way to the security gate that had been set up so personnel could equip themselves.

For what she had read, an explosion had happened and while it didn't kill anyone, despite injuring several workers and one of the ship's attendants, toxin detectors had gone wild, forcing to close the area. She showed her ID to the guard and was escorted inside.

"Ooh-hey Doc!"

Gradoona approached the cordon leading to the spire docking port, and began to unpack her custom haz-suit. Typically for galactic standard humanoids, the suits were fairly ubiquitous, but for any species outside of the standard galactic bipedal morphology, it usually required a little fore-thought. Thankfully, engineers planned for contingencies, so the Herglic had her own custom-apportioned suit that was built to her specifications. The suit was a bright orange, and as Gradoona eased it out of its vac-pack the protective garment accordioned into a broad shape.

"Never a dull day aan Joovan, eh? Dunnoo abouut the taaxins yet, but I'll get any system leaks aan the docked ship taken caare aaf all tooty-sweety."

Lorna stopped on her tracks and waited for Gradoona to speak to her before taking another step. She frowned about the toxins being still undetermined, although she wasn't that surprised in such a short amount of time. It might mean they were dealing with a rare component or a bizarre mix.

"Thanks for the info. I'm about to get geared up and check on the people who got exposed. I heard they got transported at the edge of the zone after the bombing team cleared the place for investigation. Is that correct?"

She didn't want to stay away from the actual scene for too long but if someone got some extra info, she would put her money on Gradoona.

Gradoona glanced back further down the concourse ring.

"Ooh yaah there's a triaage coordon set up I think."

She glanced at her environmental suit, and set it aside.

"Lemme get ya set up, eh? Ya waanna follow me?"

At least whatever had happened didn't seem to have an immediate bodily impact. Between the spire and the cordon, there didn't appear to be any people under serious medical isolation. A few beings were being monitored while hooked to oxygen bottles, mostly as a precaution to ensure that they had a fulsome air supply. Some others looked like they'd experienced localized burns, whether those were thermal or caustic, that wasn't immediately apparent.

"Soo, ya knoow what haappened here exaactly?"

Ever the snoop, Gradoona couldn't help to try to mine the doc for any pertinenet information.

Lorna took the scene in but couldn't help her concern about what she thought might be a lack of precaution especially given that she had received no results about what toxin they were dealing with. She hoped that the choices made were appropriate but she hoped that it wouldn't be disproved later, which could have fairly horrible consequences.

"Sure thing," she replied to Gradoona with a polite smile before following her. She wanted to get to the bottom of this and the sooner the better, so proper medical care could be administered especially for those who had been closest to exposure.

As they stepped in, she put her suit on, thanking Gradoona for her help, and of course catching on the questioning.

"Well you were closer to the whole thing than me so far," she replied, her mind running a parsec per minute about what would need to be done depending on the issues they were facing.

"I just know an explosion occurred and that whatever was released in the air could be toxic, although it doesn't seem that people are that worried."

She kept her tone neutral, as keeping a level head was a huge part of her job. She didn't have a catastrophic-inclined thought process; but she had witnessed situations going for the worse because people didn't take things seriously enough, so she preferred operating on the side of caution especially when she knew resources were available.